ps. remember the Living Goddess profile I did for the Sunday Times a while ago? It's been sold on to Cambridge University Press for use in a textbook, which is not just good news, it's also two hundred quid,  hurrah (more than I'll earn in a month as a dinner lady...).

My husband is decompressing in Cyprus following his six months of aggressive housekeeping in theatre. Don't you just love military terminology and the images it conjures up? I see him as a teeny tiny soldier, dressed in a pinny, coming out from behind red velvet stage curtains and suddenly puffing up into gargantuan proportions on a mediterranean beach. I'm sure the reality is entirely different (he may well have left the pinny behind in Afghanistan). Similarly, I went to circuits the other lunchtime and the new, young (I felt like a pedo when I realised I thought he was quite good looking) PTI told us to 'dress up' for our pre workout briefing. Dress up as what, I wondered aloud, fairies? Nobody laughed.( I must stop being flippant; it's just inappropriate for someone of my age). So, yes, Major Bumsaw is on his way home and due to arrive at exactly the same time as my Tesco delivery (which is handy - he can help me out with putting away) and this gives me less than 24 hours to complete my list of jobs, which comprises: cleaning the oven, finishing the filing & sorting the office, two massive baskets of ironing, and losing a kilo from each thigh. Yep, I know, not very likely really. Furthermore, the Brazilian blow dry is not scheduled until Thursday, so my concerns about him coming back home to Wurzel Gummidge from the skip are fairly likely. Okay, I might get the ironing done (I've run out of lemonade to have with my Pimms, so I may be a little more efficient than I was last night - or I could just drink it neat....), but that's about it.
Right, better go and get on with it I suppose. Take care xxx

So, the other morning as we were rushing about trying not to be late for school (or rather, I was rushing about trying not to be late for school and everyone else was sitting about making interesting shapes from half-eaten toast), I happened to hear Son telling Twin 1 that she could have a baby any time she wanted because she's a girl, so all she had to do was mate with a boy, which of course necessitated an emergency discussion on ovulation, implantation, periods, and tampons - all before eight in the morning. Phew. Other than that, this week has been largely stress-free. Since handing in my work I have been wafting about vacantly (although I did manage to get my act together enough to apply for the dinner lady job). However, now Hubby's arrival is imminent, I've been looking round the house and realising just how much of a skip it has turned into. So this afternoon I've re-arranged the bedroom, planted out some rather sad looking seedlings and had vague thoughts about sorting out the office, cleaning the cooker, etc. I feel my spurt of domesticity is nearly spent, though, because I've just drunk a large Pimms & lemonade a little too quickly, and it's nearly time for The Voice...
Hope you're having a good weekend xxx

Hello again. BTW I'm a genius. It's official. I just got eighty percent in my last academic essay. Remember the scary essay that I sweated blood over a couple of months ago? Well, it turns out that I wasn't as useless as I thought, which is jolly good news. I've been feeling all happy and chirpy, not just because of the essay mark and the sunshine and the prospect of Hubby coming home soon, but also because I've just handed in my second semester work (two new chapters for my book plus two short stories and an essay) and now there's just the dissertation to do. I say 'just', it's actually pretty scary because it's another twelve thousand words to conjure up, but hey, I've got my fake tan on and my teeth bleaching mouthguard in and my next door neighbour even mentioned that I looked like I'd lost weight today (yes!) so, frankly, the world is my oyster. Oh, and I'm just about to apply for a job as a dinner lady. Yes, I am. The twins have been nagging me about it and I was laughing at the whole silly notion of me being a lunchtime supervisor at their school, but then I thought, well, it would give me plenty of time to write and fit in with school holidays...so I'm picking up an application form tomorrow. And, of course, I'm already planning the press release for when I get published: "local dinner lady wins Booker Prize"...Right, well I'm off now to watch the Apprentice and wonder why Steve hasn't been fired yet (could you work with him? could you? well, you're a better person than me). Night x

Hello, sorry it's been so long. And what have I been doing in the last ten days to justify the silence? Nothing much, except turning forty two (forty two, I know!). It's always nice to have a good old birthday celebration (even if Son was up at six in the morning decorating the cake, and waking the whole household, bless him). Lovely friend AL came for the weekend (bringing sweets, so the kids now wish she was their mother, not me), along with Mum, Dad and one sister and her husband, so it was a right houseful. Handily enough there was a sunday lunch in the mess, so we all traipsed along there to eat. I think my parents were under the impression that the officers' mess would be posh - Dad even wore a cravat - but sadly it was the usual school dinner type affair (chicken breast that would be useful in hand-to-hand combat and lumpy gravy) underneath a photo of a very young-looking Queen. Still, at least I didn't have to wash up.
I wouldn't be feeling my age quite so much if Twin 1 didn't keep reminding me that I'm the 'oldest mother in school' and that 'even Katy's mum is younger' than me, etc. Every time we go to Tesco she says things like: 'Why don't you buy some make up to cover up your wrinkles?' or 'That purple dress might make you look a bit younger' and so on.
Today at breakfast, there was the usual discussion about Fairyland, and who the fairies are (apparently Son is a vampire fairy, which was news to me). Until now, I've been assigned the title of  Fairy Queen, and I mentioned something about this as I chipped into the conversation.
Twin 1's response:
"No you can't be the Fairy Queen because the queen has to have lovely long hair without any grey in it. You're too old and you don't wear nice lipstick or dresses. In Fairyland, when you get too old you get banished to real life and you'll probably go in the woods and get killed by a hunter. That's just the way it is," she said with a shrug, and got back to her Special K (which, incidentally, is meant to be for my own cereal bowl only, but the evil little fairy keeps on stealing it and only eating the red berries, and leaving the rest).
I'm not sure what I think of Fairyland's ageism and attitude to regicide, but I suppose it fits in with the pink spangly regime quite well.
Anyway, I'm off to the real world now (probably to meet a hunter and get myself killed, unless I manage to find some lipstick, wrinkle cream and a sparkly dress before nightfall).
Take care xxx

I'm wishing my husband would hurry up and come home, not least because he can have the mildly embarrassing conversations with Son. Like this one, for example, that took place earlier this evening, whilst playing our pre-bedtime game of cards:
Son (aged 10): Mummy, is having sexual relations fun?
Me (valuing honesty above all things but taking a split-second decision to give away as little as possible): Yes.
Him: Is that because of the endorphins?
Me (casually offhand): I think it's oxytocin actually.
Him: Oh.
Then we got back to the game of cards. Phew, managed to get out of that one, but it's only a matter of time before there are more questions, I'm sure.
Hurry up and come home, Major Bumsaw, you are needed on the Home Front!

Hi, how are things? I'm feeling a combination of perkiness and guilt: perkiness because it has finally stopped raining, but guilt because I really should be out there in the garden making use of the sunshine, and I'm not. Frankly, gardening scares me almost as much as oven cleaning (no, I still haven't done it). Anyway, I've finally got hold of the laptop because Son has been lured out by his friend across the road - he can't resist the boy with the coolest sets of Lego in town. There are various interesting bumps and squeaks from upstairs. The Twins are hosting four friends and I think they're planning a disco, or possibly world domination. I think they would manage world domination fairly swiftly, actually, not least because Twin 2 has some extremely good torture methods that would easily scare any rogue elements into submisson. Under the pink spangly regime, there would be no need for rendering, waterboarding or press censorship. Anyone who didn't agree with the government would simply be subjected to an onslaught of Twin 2's jokes. Let me give you an example of one of the better ones:
-knock knock
-who's there?
-Justin Bieber
-Justin Bieber who?
-Oooh, Justin Bieber is my boyfriend! (followed by insane laughter).
Yep, those subversive agitators would give up in a nanosecond.
So apart from the rise of the pink spangly dominatrices, not much else has happened this weekend...let me think...
Oooh, yes, the Twins have joined a gymnastics class (all the better to outmanoevre their political opponents, perhaps). But what's amazing about this is that, as you know, Twin 2 has cerebral palsy and I thought there was no way ever in a million years that she'd be able to join a gymnastics class, of all things. But Twin 1 is very springy and agile and she wanted to go, and Twin 2 nagged and cried and whinged and employed all her many tactics and in the end I gave way and asked the gymnastics teacher if she could have a go as well...and she said yes! Inclusivity is alive and well and living in a leisure centre in Beeston. I was so overwhelmed at the response that I have to admit to bursting into tears. So that was good. How was your weekend?
Take care xxxx

My lovely son has only left me twenty minutes of charge on the laptop, so I'll be brief (no, I can't go upstairs and get the lead, because that would mean missing crucial moments of 'Will & Kate: the first year' on ITV. Sorry, yes I am a shallow old Royalist - best not to dwell on the permanent marker moustache on the Queen's portrait incident at university - after all, the Queen is effectively Hubby's boss).
I was really happy to get back into university today for a meeting with my tutor. I'm clinging onto my second-chance student hood; I'll be quite sad to leave it all behind and get back to reality. Even though the taught part of the course is over, I still have loads of work to do, and I don't officially graduate until November, I think, so I can carry on in student mode until then (eating Beanfeast out of a mug with a teaspoon because nobody can be bothered to do the washing up, mainly).
 I'm very much looking forward to my second-chance graduation, I have to say, as I did make a bit of a hash of it first time round. It was my friend H's twenty-first birthday the day before, and we went out for cocktails with her and all her scary hockey club friends. I don't remember much of the night, but I do remember vomming just before having my graduation portrait taken, and my mum muttering darkly that I should really have worked a bit harder and got a 2:1.
You know how most parents proudly display their children's graduation portraits somewhere prominent, like the hall table or the mantlepiece? That never happened to me - I found them a few years later in a box under the bed in the spare room. I can't say I blame them for not putting me on display; I do look a bit green around the gills.
So this time, the plan is to do better than a 2:2 and definitely not vomit.
Ah, look at the lovely royal couple...sorry, I have to go and watch more Hello-style telly now. Take care xx